Sunday, October 21, 2018

Beth Moore and her "Sorry" drummer

Dear Beth,

I’ve kicked this around for over a week
now. I thought maybe I just didn’t care about you, or your BS ramblings and
misandry enough to respond to your kneeling-drummer trick. But I thought about
it and decided I needed to vent. Men are under attack these days and sadly, you’re
leading the charge.

I’ll spare you a lot of bible verses about
men and women and the way God ordained the relationship between the two. I mean
it’s not like you care very much what the Bible says about that stuff. You’ve
picked and chosen what to obey and what to ignore and made quite a cottage
industry out of it. You’ve made a boatload of money for yourself and for
Lifeway, which is -as we all know—what really counts. You must be “anointed”
otherwise your materials wouldn’t sell like they do. In the evangelical world,
we know that pastors with big churches and authors with big sales numbers
achieve these things only because God blesses them. It’s a sign of His hand
upon them, right?

Let’s skip all that and talk about that
emasculated drummer of yours, and this rampant man-hate thing you have going
on. That and the “But Ricky…I’m a victim tooooo! Waaahhhhh!” that you’ve
served up as a narrative for the last three years or so.

When I heard that your drummer – an alleged
male of the species—dropped to his knees and “apologized on behalf of all men…”
I vacillated between wanting to vomit and wanting to find that little candy-xxx
and punch him in the throat. All men don’t
owe women an apology, princess, and it’s best you realize that and stop milking
this school of thought to sell more books.

Let me tell you about one such man.

This guy was deeply in love with
his wife. They were married three years. Almost to the day. She divorced him,
not because he abused her, not because he had affairs or didn’t go to church or
didn’t show her enough attention. He adored her. He set aside every dream he
ever had, (except, of course, the dreams of a wife and family and a home and a
fiftieth wedding anniversary) and he devoted himself to making her dreams come
true. And if it meant that none of his did, then he was okay with that, so long
as her’s did.

But she got better offers from
wealthy doctors and eventually she left with the highest bidder.

This guy was devastated. They had an eighteen-month-old
daughter who he absolutely adored. He was a devoted father. His daily life that
once revolved around his little princess was reduced to once a week and every
other weekend.

Without his family he was lost. He roamed
his house like a ghost. He would wake up many nights in the fetal position on
the living room floor, with his fingertips bleeding, because he’d fallen asleep
there, after sobbing for hours and clutching the carpet fibers so tightly that
they cut into his fingertips. He sat alone in church every Sunday, feeling as
if everyone was staring at him and yet not even seeing him. There were support
groups for the women going through divorces, but not for the men. He was relegated
to the shadows. He wore his sorrow like a trench coat.

He endured almost yearly court
battles because his wife, who remarried after a few years and was making plenty
of money, would take him to court for increased child support if he showed even
the slightest hint of success. The judge who heard each case, was herself, a
five-time divorcee. Five times. Yet nobody dared question her objectivity. They
didn’t dare. She ran her courtroom like a dictator and jailed any man who dared
speak up.

There were no books in Lifeway to help him
find his way across this lonely sea. None. Not one. Nobody in Christian
publishing cared about his plight, because men don’t buy books the way women
do, and even though there is a screaming need…a dollar is a dollar.

His ex-wife’s new husband was a drug-addled
monster. He attacked their daughter in vicious, cruel ways. He killed one of her
pets. He destroyed her property. He tried everything he could think of to come
between my friend and his daughter. Yet my friend endured, because he loved his
daughter and because that’s what good dads do. His ex-wife sided with her new
husband, even to the point of siding against her own daughter. My friend lost
his job in 2008 when the market collapsed. He tried to find work but could not.
He could not move to a city where employment was better because his daughter
was at risk. So, he stayed, even though that meant living in his car.

By 45 years of age he was homeless. He
shivered in the winter and sweltered in the summer. Six years of this could not
dim his love for his daughter, or his fierce determination to remain in her
life. He protected her from the deepening horrors at her mom’s house as best he
could. Finally, when his little girl could not take it anymore, and her mom
finally saw things for what they were, she let him take their child and move to
another state.

He’s been a single dad for almost five
years now. He has lost many a night’s sleep over the pain his little girl has
been suffering. He thought he was going to lose her about two years ago. He has
shelved all his own dreams and accepted a job that pays not nearly enough, but
it provides her college tuition and so he endures every day and works a side
job in virtually every spare hour, just to make sure she has enough.

He does this willingly, because that’s
what good men, good dads, do. It was nine years before his ex-wife would even
admit to her sins that led to their marriage dissolving. He held no grudge. He
speaks no ill of her to their daughter, even though there is ill to speak if he
wanted to. He chooses to show her respect.

In the twenty years since they divorced, he
has never had a woman over to his house. Never dated seriously. He chose to
remain single because he knew his daughter needed to know that at least one of
her parents was going to put her first. He did it because he was afraid a woman
would not understand his devotion to his child. Most of them did not.

He has never left his daughter home while
he spent the night with a woman. Even though she is almost 21 and could
certainly stay home alone. He has never allowed another woman to intrude on his
ex-wife’s sacred motherhood. (Even though for so many years she did not return
this courtesy.)

This man has always treated women with
respect. He did this for his daughter. He did this because he is a man.

By now, Beth, you’ve likely guessed that
this man is me. I endured homelessness. I sobbed many nights on my living room
floor because my heart was shattered. I sat alone in church every Sunday,
because nobody knows how to reach a man in the midst of a divorce…and they don’t
care.

If anyone wanted to play the victim card,
I certainly could. If anyone wanted to develop a severe case of woman-hate, I
could have. Maybe even should have.
But I did not. I behaved like a grown-up and refused to affix blame to all
woman.

In view of this, where your
beta-male drummer and his embarrassing “apology for all men” is concerned…count
me out. I don’t owe you any apology. I don’t owe you sXXX!

You’ve grown amazingly wealthy
playing this victim card of yours and writing book after book teaching other
women how victimized they really are too. You’ve developed your own army of
brittle, bitter Bettys who refuse to drop their claim of victimization and
relinquish their man-hate. To do so would require them to grow the hell up and
God knows we can’t have that. God knows we can’t put that stuff behind us,
because we might actually be forced to be responsible for our actions…you know,
like big people. Then who would you
sell books to?

Your drummer owes me an apology. He doesn’t speak for me and to lump me in with abusive
men…to lump any other men in with
abusers, is an outrage.

Until you address the sins of
woman with the same outrage and venom that you do the alleged sins of men, you
have no validity. None.

Your drummer was wrong. And whatever “fell
on you” at that meeting was not the Holy Spirit. The truth is that women wound
men at least as much as men wound women. To say otherwise is to lie. To
perpetuate your man-hate issues and teach them to another generation is a sin.